Rapid Recovery From Disaster

Michael Galvin knows more about disaster recovery and business continuity than most of us care to know. That's because the vice president and chief infrastructure officer of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield has first-hand experience with the worst catastrophe this country has ever endured: September 11, 2001.The New York-based health insurance company occupied 10 floors and 480,000 square feet in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And, although the company tragically lost 11 people that day and several employees were injured, most of the 1,900 employees and consultants escaped from the building unharmed.

Empire also lost 265 servers, 2,300 desktops and 400 laptop computers. But customers never even noticed a difference in service. "Everything is designed and engineered for redundancy and reliability," says Galvin. "We always build for the worst-case scenario-although, quite honestly, no one expected to lose a whole building."